CDA man whose car, goods were stolen blames the police for lack of arrest

Gregory Frechette sat on the back porch one morning in January, fired up a cigarette and noticed his car was no longer in the driveway where he had parked it the night before.

Frechette, 73, looked around the house he shares with several roommates, and not seeing his silver 2001 Toyota Camry, called the police.

The stolen car was found three days later, Jan. 11, in Post Falls, but it had been cleaned out.

Now, he says, he is getting no cooperation from police who don’t return his phone calls, and appear to have dropped the case altogether.

“I’m pissed,” Frechette said. “I’m very irate.”

Police said they have returned all of Frechette’s phone calls to inquire about the investigation, they have checked pawn shops to no avail for the jewelry, art and personal belongings Frechette said were stolen from his car, and that until new evidence turns up, the investigation has been marked inactive.

“We haven’t developed probable cause,” Coeur d’Alene Police Captain Dave Hagar said.

Frechette gave officers a list of suspects, but Hagar said the evidence is thin.

There are no fingerprints, there is no video footage and no still photographs from surveillance cameras and there has been no confession. So there is little proof to tie a suspect to the crime.

“We can’t arrest somebody on that,” Hagar said.

Frechette lives on 15th Street in a house with men who are on probation or parole. The house is designated clean and sober.

“Everyone in here has a criminal record, but me,” says Frechette, whose income is closely tied to his monthly Social Security check.

“I live here because it’s cheap,” he said.

He worked 28 years in the hardware business, he said. Had a job as a federal investigator before that, and worked as a photographer.

In lieu of paying for a costly storage unit, he kept his belongings in his car. He figures the jewelry stolen from his trunk was valued around $20,000, an oil painting of Jesus wearing a red robe he says was appraised at an art gallery at $20,000. It is also gone, as are mason’s tools, leather cases, valises, folders and a shortwave radio — all stolen.

“They even took my birth certificate,” Frechette says.

And the thieves swiped the handicap hangar off his rear-view mirror.

Frechette, who is equipped with a catheter and walks with a cane, said the thieves stole his prescription medications — prostate, blood pressure and pills for diabetes — personal records and photo albums.

“That’s no good to anybody,” he said. “Why would they want that?”

He is perplexed, he said, by the malice, and the lack of law enforcement response.

“I have never had anything like this happen before,” he said. “I am an old man. I have been collecting this stuff in my trunk for 50 or 60 years. It’s personal property. The trunk was packed full of stuff.”

For investigators, though, the leads have fizzled.

“We’ve done what we could with this,” Hagar said.

The incident has so soured Frechette that he plans to leave town. He’ll likely head south to Mountain Home, he said.

“I know the police chief down there,” he added.